An near-daily experience that, for me, borders on obsession: the nightly family movie. I was raised in this general vein, equipped with no television (as in channels) per se but a VCR (waayyy back in the day we used to rent one! It came in a molded plastic case and weighed five hundred pounds) and the appeal of sitting with family and occasionally talking through a bad film. As an eight year old some of my earliest memories in our “new” home (that is, really old and being repaired and remodeled my entire life) involved watching adult films like The Shining and Alien (I still remember the rust velvet burnout couch I’d hide behind), and occasionally being banished to the bedroom where we could listen in fascinated horror to even more adult (read: “smutty”) features like To Live and Die in L.A. and Sex, Lies, and Videotape.
Tonight’s Hoga-pick is our typical fare: an episode of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000”, in this case a re-watch of the riff on the horridly silly Riding With Death. This episode is excellent for its uber-seventies touches (fade-away handshakes, trucker hats over feathered hair, use of the CB radio), manly “Ace” hero (who I see is still acting in television, bless his heart), and – this was the most gleeful aspect for me – the fact it is clearly some kind of failed or back-burner two-episode television show spliced (poorly) into a feature length film (one could wretchedly follow this MST3K episode through YouTube, which I did for Tarantino’s Death Proof, to no ill effect, because it was an self-indulged and uninspired piece of film although Kurt Russell tickled the pants off me)! They couldn’t write stuff like this! Well, they can… but probably shouldn’t.
Time to snuggle up under fresh blankets (I had to wash just about all of them in our house after last night’s Barf-O-Rama) with my loved ones.